The series of Policy Discussion Papers on Public Administration Reform and Anti-Corruption is led and edited by Dr Sarah Dix, Policy Advisor on Public Administration Reform and Anti-Corruption at UNDP Viet Nam with substantive support from Ms Do Thanh Huyen, Policy Analyst on Public Administration Reform and Anti-Corruption at UNDP Viet Nam.

The series aims to analyze trends in Viet Nam regarding the implementation processes and options in specific public administration reform areas. In order to confront the social, economic, political and environmental challenges facing Viet Nam, policy makers need to be informed by evidence. These policy papers aim to contribute to current policy debate by providing discussion inputs on policy reforms – thereby helping to improve Viet Nam’s development efforts.

Three principles guide the production of the policy discussion papers: (i) evidence-based research, (ii) academic rigour and independence of analysis, and (iii) social legitimacy and a participatory process. This involves a substantive research approach with a rigorous and systematic identification of policy options on key public administration reform and anti-corruption issues.

During the past five years, the Viet Nam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) has captured and reflected the experiences of nearly 50,000 citizens in the country. PAPI is a pioneering initiative that has become the largest time-series national governance and public administration performance monitoring tool in Viet Nam exclusively based on citizens experiences. These annual and nationwide iterations of PAPI provide ‘real-time’ data and information on the implementation of complex, yet key governance and public administration processes as Vietnamese citizens experience them.

Overall, the three years of nationwide evidence collected by PAPI displays a great deal of stability and consistency in scores annually. The remarkable consistency in dimension scores in 2013 once again provides reassurance on the robustness of data collection and reliability of the sample frame and methodology.

This Report proposes the Justice Index as a new tool for analyzing and making legal and judicial policies. It is also an effective tool to make state agencies both at central and local levels accountable to citizens for the performance of public institutions, efforts to ensure justice – or fairness and equality – for citizens. The Report begins by explaining the demand for a policy tool to help measure and assess people’s experience of justice in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 introduces the research and survey methodology. Chapter 3 gives a national overview of distributive justice and equality in practice, identifying the challenges faced by local people in getting access to the judicial system and/or public institutions in general. It also identifies shortcomings in: resolving civil disputes and administrative complaints; as well as ensuring the fundamental rights of the people. Chapter 4 presents the results of the 21 surveyed provinces of the 2012 Justice Index. The report concludes by listing some policy implications, based on 2012 Justice Index findings, in Chapter 5.

The Viet Nam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) is a joint collaboration between the Centre for Community Support Development Studies (CECODES) under the Viet Nam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Viet Nam since 2009, with the close partnership and support of the Centre for Theory Work of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front from 2009-2010, the Front Review from 2010-2012, the Commission for People’s Petitions under the National Assembly Steering Committee in 2012, and the Centre for Research and Training of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front—VFF-CRT from 2013.

The 2012 PAPI survey is the result of several years of fine-tuning. The first PAPI survey was piloted in three provinces in 2009 and then expanded to 30 provinces in 2010. Through these first two iterations, questions were adjusted to better capture citizen experiences. In 2011 PAPI was conducted for the first time in all 63 provinces in Viet Nam. The questions that form the basis of the PAPI findings were also finalized. From this point on, PAPI will not only be able to provide a useful indicator for central and local government performance, but also a metric to assess how performance has changed over time.

PAPI assesses three mutually reinforcing processes: policy making, policy implementation and the monitoring of public service delivery. The dimensions are specifically tailored to Viet Nam’s national and local level contexts. The philosophy behind PAPI’s innovative policy monitoring approach is that citizens are seens as “end-users of public administrative services” capable of assessing governance and public administration in their localities. The end result is Viet Nam’s first publically available dataset providing an objective evaluation of governance from the perspective of citizens. Based on this citizen input, PAPI provides a set of objective indicators that help assess the performance in governance and public administration, while at the same time providing an incentive for provinces to improve their performance over the long term. PAPI is supported substantively and technically by a national advisory board and a group of international governance measurement experts.

CECODES, VFF and UNDP aim to support improvements in transparency; stimulate reform; enlarge the ‘space’ for citizen participation in policy planning, implementation, and monitoring; as well as to significantly expand the pool of quantitative data available for policy formulation and improvement.

Since 2008, the UNDP Project “Strengthening Capacities of Representative Bodies in Vietnam” has supported People’s Councils from various provinces and cities to pilot public consultations (PCs). Support for enhancing constituency relations (CRs) was then started in 2009. Some provinces and cities were supported to implement both these two practices. During the implementation, there were certain confusions regarding purposes, objectives and target groups of these two practices. This paper explores the conceptual differences between constituency relations and public consultations and their applicability in the Vietnamese context. Both play a key role in channeling the aspirations of individual citizens into the governmental process, and so are key components of the system of representation and thereby of legitimising representative institutions. This paper also examines how the application of certain tools (often the same) can contribute to both in different ways in order to clarify the nature of CR and PC tools.

The National Assembly’s and National Assembly Standing Committee’s oversight processes are a complex set of legal procedures and steps. They are also the tools guaranteeing the quality, efficiency and integrity of oversight activities as well as the legality of oversight results. While oversight processes are themself not sufficient to ensure the efficient oversight over entire activities of state apparatus, including law and policy implementation and state budget expenditure, improving them may lead to critical impact on efficiency of oversight activities of the National Assembly.

Based on the importance of oversight and its relevance to increasing the quality and effectiveness of the work of the National Assembly and the National Assembly Standing Committee, the research on the Oversight Procedures of the National Assembly and the National Assembly Standing Committee is of prime importance and significance in the current period.

Under regulations of the Constitution and the Law on the Organization of the National Assembly, the National Assembly is the only body vested with powers to formulate and amend the constitution, to make and amend laws; the National Assembly is also the highest body supervising all activities of the state, playing the decision-making role when dealing with issues of national importance. To ensure the highest efficiency in the National Assembly’s performance, effective rules and procedures should be in place.

Therefore, the development, improvement and reform of the rules and procedures of the National Assembly including the legislative activities of the National Assembly; the verification and oversight activities of the National Assembly’s agencies; activities of the Delegation of National Assembly Deputies and individual National Assembly Deputy to ensure the quality of the operation of the National Assembly are necessary. In this context, the research on the reform of the rules and procedures of the National Assembly is necessary and significant, particularly in the beginning of the XIIIth National Assembly.

This report focuses on the rules and procedures of the National Assembly as follows: (i) Legislative process and procedures of the National Assembly including the verification activities of the National Assembly’s agencies; (ii) Oversight procedures of the National Assembly’s agencies; and (iii) Rules and procedures in operation of the Delegations of National Assembly Deputies and individual National Assembly Deputy.

Between 2008 and 2012, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/Office of the National Assembly (ONA) Project “Strengthening the capacity of representative bodies in Viet Nam (Phase III)” has supported more than 20 Provincial People’s Councils (PPCs) in conducting activities in support of public consultations and constituency relations. After three years of piloting, PPC public consultation activities have produced a wealth of material identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the public consultations process. It showed that, in particular, the PPCs operating in mountainous regions and in areas with ethnic minorities face notable difficulties in conducting public consultation and constituency relation activities. These difficulties derive both from objective conditions and from internal elements of the local PPCs.

This report seeks to summarize details of public consultation and constituency relation activities of PPCs in mountainous regions and areas with ethnic minorities. The report consolidates and analyses experiences of the aforementioned PPCs in overcoming difficulties in conducting public consultations and constituency relations. Finally, the report aims to contribute to improving public consultation and constituency relation activities through the provision of some recommendations.

Public consultations are important tools which help elected bodies gather sufficient evidence and information to decide policies or laws and to oversee the implementation of these measures. Public consultations enable people to express their opinions, which are then taken into account and considered by local governments. Public consultations have occurred in Viet Nam since the 1980s in the form of gathering views on the Constitution, on draft laws and ordinances and on issues of interest to the people. Public consultations are regulated under the Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents (2008). In 2008, the Office of National Assembly (ONA)/United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project entered its third phase and started a project to enhance public consultations at both the National Assembly and Provincial People’s Council level. Through the piloting of the public consultations, there comes a need for a manual guiding on the implementation and serving as a material for relevant trainings. Under the framework of the Project, the Manual on Public Consultations for the Provincial People’s Councils had been developed.

This manual is one of the core documents produced in the course of this Project. It is a source of reference, disseminating experiences and lessons learnt, and can be updated. It includes the following major contents: a definition of public consultations; an outline of the significance of public consultations; descriptions of the public consultation process; an outline of public consultation tools; details of skills useful in public consultations; detail on how to report on public consultations; and details on how to process information to serve the oversight and decision-making work of the People’s Councils. The manual is designed with the purpose of providing elected Deputies selective information on the current practices of People’s Councils.

Public consultations are important tools which help elected bodies gather sufficient evidence and information to decide policies or laws and to oversee the implementation of these measures. Since 2008, the Office of National Assembly (ONA)/United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project entered its third phase and started support to enhance public consultations at both the National Assembly and Provincial People’s Council level. During the implementation, some PPCs issued Decisions and Coordination Regulations in order to initially regulate the public consultations activity at provincial level. In order to further widen the application of public consultations in other PPCs, there was need for a set of guidelines on institutionalisation of this practice. The institutionalisation guideline can also be used as material for various relevant trainings.

In this context, the Project supported the drafting of the Manual on the Institutionalization of Public Consultations for the Provincial People’s Councils. This manual is mainly designed for PPCs deputies and supporting staff in charge of this matter. In addition, the manual can serve as an useful reference material for researchers in areas of political science, law, administration, institutional development and other interested readers.

Viet Nam has always placed a strong emphasis on gender equality. This has resulted in important achievements such as low maternal mortality and high access to education. Indeed, Vietnamese women have one of the highest labour force participation rates in the world. On most gender indicators Viet Nam compares positively in international rankings, especially compared to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Despite the fact that Viet Nam has achieved middle-income status and is in the process of modernization, the number of women represented in the National Assembly has been declining over the past ten years.

This study, based largely on interviews with current and former female Members of Parliament and representatives of the Viet Nam Women’s Union, the Fatherland Front, government officials and social organizations, indicates that there are a number of ways that the process could be improved to increase the number of women who are successful in elections.

The purpose of this report is to highlight trends in women’s representation in Viet Nam’s government, provide an overview of the legal framework related to women’s leadership and to discuss the challenges and barriers faced by women in the public sector. The report is a review and analysis of recent research findings and government reports related to women in decision making. The report highlights that although there has been considerable progress made by Viet Nam in promoting gender equality and women empowerment, there still remains a gap between the targets and expectations expressed in government legislation and in the actual figures of women’s representation.

In Vietnam, public consultations have been applied by the executive since the 1980s in the form of taking opinions on the constitution, draft laws and ordinances and on issues of interest to the people. For the National Assembly, public consultations are also of prime importance for the activities of the Ethnic Council and the Committees of the National Assembly (NA), particularly in the drafting of laws, ordinances and resolutions, as well as in the collecting of information and evidence serving the work assigned by the National Assembly and its National Assembly Standing Committee.

The NA Committees have a history of holding some consultations. Acting on the basis of elements of the Law on Laws 2008, some NA Committees have held public consultations, in the course of which they have made use of certain consultation tools such as consultative meetings, social surveys, and meetings with experts, to collect information and evidence to serve their work.

In this context, the Project “Strengthening the capacity of representative bodies in Viet Nam (Phase 3)” decided to compile “Guidelines on public consultations for the Ethnic Council and the Committees of the National Assembly”. The guidelines will act as a reference work for members of the Ethnic Council and Committees of the National Assembly and their supporting staff, helping them organise consultation activities. The guidelines include the following major contents: the concept of public consultations; the significance of public consultations in activities of the NA Committees; the legal framework of public consultations; steps to conduct public consultations; and details on the tools for public consultations.

Renovation on operations of Ethnic Council and Committees of National Assembly (will be called NA Committees hereafter) is a necessary reform. Over the past years, numerous solutions have been realized in order to strengthen operation capacities and role of the NA Committees. In addition, NA Committees and their members should be provided with necessary and useful information and researches on new practices for consideration of suitable application in the context of Vietnam. Among all the researches, the research on possibility of application of committee hearings is one of the new practices which has been often discussed in the past recent years.

In this context, the Project “Strengthening the capacity of representative bodies in Viet Nam (Phase 3)” decided to compile this research report to study on Parliamentary Committee Public Hearings in some countries in the world. The research report also looks into legal regulations and the practical operations of NA Committees in Vietnam; and analyses the need and possibility of committee hearings application in the NA of Vietnam as well as propose initial application recommendations.

“People know, people discuss, people do and people verify” is a Vietnamese phrase that perhaps best summarizes the goals of the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI). PAPI provides objective information about citizens’ experiences and interactions with local authorities, thus “people know”. It provides a means for the discussion and validation of findings at central and local levels in order for people to discuss. PAPI illuminates the collective experience of what citizens do, enabling policy makers to act in their interests, thereby fulfilling the precept that “people do”. Finally, PAPI provides a tool to assess actual administrative performance allowing people to verify.

This publication summarizes support the UN has provided over the past 15 years to the National Assembly. This includes assistance to build its institutional capacity in the legislative process, oversight and representation functions; support in thematic areas such as the national response to HIV; and support for policy dialogue and aid coordination.

Civil Society Index studies were carried out worldwide from 2004 to 2006 in order to assess the present strengths and weaknesses of civil society in several dozen countries. The assessments follow similar methodologies in each country to assess civil society at a national level, based on the participation of a national Stakeholder Assessment Group (SAG) and a national team comprising a coordinator, researchers and an international civil society expert. The assessments are based on a common methodology developed by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation through extensive research in a number of pilot countries.

The VietNam project was carried out from April 2005 to March 2006 and was made possible by support from the UNDP and SNV in VietNam. It was the first attempt in Viet Nam to broadly map civil society.

Objectives of the CSI include:

Creating knowledge about the state of civil society

Creating a shared understanding of civil society among key stakeholders

Improving the self-understanding of civil society and developing a better appreciation of its role

Producing an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of civil society and outlining some priority areas for policy and actions.

This discussion paper provides a context for the project in Viet Nam and summarises the methodology and outcome of the CSI study. The definition used for civil society is broad and inclusive and focuses on the functions, rather than the forms, of the organisations involved. The major findings are discussed and the paper concludes with a number of recommendations as to how the development of civil society in Viet Nam could be further supported.

The CSI studies assess four essential dimensions of civil society, which together give a broad and coherent perspective on civil society. The four dimensions are: the structure of civil society, the socio-economic environment for civil society, the values of civil society, and the impact of civil society activities. In all, the Stakeholder Assessment Group (SAG) assessed 74 indicators related to the four dimensions.

PAPI provides objective and evidence-based measures of provincial performance of the public administration system and public service delivery agencies at the provincial level. Based on the experiences of 5,568 randomly selected citizens from different demographic backgrounds in 30 selected provinces, it is expected PAPI will play an important role as social feedback that informs policy makers and executers at the central and provincial levels, of the current performance of local government

This is one of a series of studies on Competitiveness and the Impact of Trade in Services Liberalization in Viet Nam, conducted in the framework of the project “Capacity Strengthening to Manage and Promote Trade in Services in Viet Nam in the Context of Integration” (or “Trade in Services” Project - VIE/02/009), which is currently being funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and implemented by the Department of Trade and Services of the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI).

This study presents an overview of the insurance sector in Viet Nam. It provides an analysis of the competitiveness of Viet Nam’s insurance services in the context of recent global sector integration developments; and the possible impact of further liberalization of insurance services from two different angles: impact on the sector itself, and on the economy, including social impacts. The report also presents a set of recommendations, including recommendations for improving the legal and policy framework; developing a strategy for the sector; and improving governance and insurance operations.

The book “Reforming Public Administration in Vietnam: Current Situation and Recommendations” presents detailed discussions on developments of public administration in Vietnam over the last decade of reform and suggests ways forward or options for speeding up the reform process. The book, with one overview and six thematic chapters, provides rich insights into six major and cross-cutting themes of public administration reform in Vietnam, including (i) institutional reform, (ii) government organisation, (iii) human resources development for the civil service, (iv) public finance management, (v) economic development and public administration reform, and (vi) anti-corruption, development and public administration.

The volume is a joint product of 18 senior and mid-range researchers from the world and Vietnam, who participated in the research—commissioned by United Nations Development Programme in Vietnam and led and edited by UNDP Policy Advisor on Public Administration Reform and Anti-corruption—between mid-2008 and early 2009. It also involved over 100 interviewees who are experts in the area of public administration in Vietnam and are serving or have served in the political, state, civil society organisations as well as think-tanks in Vietnam.

The volume should be of special interests to policy-makers in Vietnam, academics engaged Vietnam studies, as well as applied researchers and development partners who are directly involved in efforts to facilitate public administration reforms in Vietnam.

This paper outlines an experimental research study aiming to measure justice in Viet Nam from citizen’s experience and perception. It illustrates the survey methodology and instrument used in ascertaining respondents’ reaction to justice through case study on environmental and land disputes. As an outcome, the study sheds light on the reality of huge gap between law and practice, the existence of a legal pluralism system where formal, informal and customary institutions are found synergy.

Ha Noi, October 17/10/2017 - Aiming at improving the living environment and bringing culture and art to the community towards a better urban future, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) successfully developed the project “Promote participatory, community-based and youth-led approach in safe, greening public spaces in Hoan Kiem district toward a pro-poor, inclusive and sustainable urban development” (hereinafter called Public Spaces project) under the Block by Block program with Mojang, the makers of the videogame Minecraft.

Deadline for round 1:From 17/10/2017 to 04/11/2017Extended to 9 November 2017

The age at which a child, can be held criminally liable is a controversial issue around the world. Within Viet Nam, this issue is currently being grappled with in the Penal Code amendments. Some argue that a "get tough on crime" approach is necessary to punish children to prevent further criminality.

However, international research shows that because of their developmental stages, labelling and treating children as criminals at an early age can have serious negative impacts on their development and successful rehabilitation.

On the occasion of New Year 2017, on behalf of the United Nations family in Viet Nam I wish to reiterate our appreciation and express our warmest wishes to our partners and friends throughout the country. We wish our partners and their families in Viet Nam peace, prosperity, good health and happiness in the coming year.

As we enter the second year of the Sustainable Development Goals era, we look forward to continuing our close cooperation for the sake of Viet Nam’s future development; one which is inclusive, equitable and sustainable, with no one left behind.

Thirty-five years since the emergence of AIDS, the international community can look back with some pride. But we must also look ahead with resolve and commitment to reach our goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

There has been real progress in tackling the disease. More people than ever are on treatment. Since 2010, the number of children infected through mother to child transmission has dropped by half. Fewer people die of AIDS related causes each year. And people living with HIV are living longer lives.

The number of people with access to life-saving medicines has doubled over the past five years, now topping 18 million. With the right investments, the world can get on the fast-track to achieve our target of 30 million people on treatment by 2030. Access to HIV medicines to prevent mother to child transmission is now available to more than 75 per cent of those in need.